The Uneasy Distance Between Us

The Story of a Man Who Did Not Fit Into the World

September 18 marked the Polish theatrical release of François Ozon’s The Stranger, the first French film adaptation of one of the best-known novels by Albert Camus (1913–1960), the French philosopher, writer, and Nobel laureate.

The film remains faithful to the novel’s plot while preserving its central philosophical message. Leaving the theater, we may well feel that the questions and dilemmas Camus and Ozon explore remain profoundly relevant, perhaps even timeless. They continue to invite deeper reflection on human nature and the world.

What Does It Mean to Feel Alienated?

Meursault, the protagonist, lives in Algiers and is of French descent. He belongs to the community known as the pieds-noirs: Europeans living in colonial Algeria. He works as a clerk and, in his private life, is profoundly withdrawn emotionally and indifferent to social conventions. His story begins with news of the death of his mother, who had been living in a care home.

He travels to her funeral but shows no emotion about the experience. He drinks coffee beside the coffin, smokes cigarettes, and seems barely interested in saying his final goodbye. Immediately after the funeral, he spends time at the beach with his acquaintance Marie. They go to see a comedy and begin an affair. His indifference extends to every part of his life, as though nothing really matters to him.

Throughout the film, as in the novel, we observe his moral passivity and lack of involvement in every situation. The suffering of a dog abused by his neighbor leaves him unmoved. When Marie asks whether he loves her, he replies that it does not matter, but that he can marry her if she wants.

His story reaches its climax on a sun-scorched beach. There, Meursault shoots and kills an Arab man with a revolver, later explaining his actions in terms of the heat and the blinding sun. We witness a trial in which the court focuses less on the crime itself than on Meursault’s behavior after his mother’s death. The court treats his failure to cry as evidence of moral corruption and sentences him to death. He makes no attempt to justify himself or feign remorse, refusing to lie or play the part society expects of him.

Questions That Never Lose Their Relevance

Both Camus and Ozon use Meursault’s story to ask fundamental questions about the human condition. Central to French existentialism is the search for meaning in human life, and whether finding it is possible—or, rather, impossible.

Why does our life so often seem absurd? When are we most likely to experience a complete inability to understand ourselves or the world around us? We seek meaning and need it, yet the world remains silent in the face of so many of our questions. Meursault therefore refuses to force meaning into existence or pretend he has found it. His indifference is more than mere emotional coldness. It is the stance of someone who sees everything as equally inconsequential, with death awaiting us at the end.

Grief That Cannot Be Performed

Society expects us to mourn when someone close to us dies, and that mourning must find expression in tears and despair. According to accepted social conventions, genuine grief requires us to forgo entertainment, withdraw from social life, dress appropriately, and so on. Meursault refuses to play this part because he does not want to say or show more than he feels.

In his film, Ozon asks whether being honest with ourselves—refusing to adopt the patterns and conventions the world expects—can lead others to see us as lacking humanity. What, then, is authenticity, and what is convention? What price must we sometimes pay for being ourselves against the expectations of others?

The trial following the killing of the Arab man is especially significant here. It effectively becomes a judgment on the protagonist’s character rather than his actions. The fact that Meursault did not cry at his mother’s funeral becomes an absurd argument for his guilt. But what kind of guilt: moral, emotional?

Following Camus, Ozon shows how often institutions try to fit reality into a coherent, comprehensible narrative. Anyone who does not fit that narrative becomes a threat. We should therefore ask ourselves: On what grounds do we so often judge other people? What guides our judgments, and how often do we hurt someone simply because we do not understand them?

Meursault Is Not the Only Stranger

Finally, we reach the central question of alienation: what does it mean to be a stranger? A stranger to whom or to what—to other people, to the world and its realities, to society, or perhaps to ourselves? Meursault does not want to lie, so he refuses to pretend to have feelings he does not experience. Society excludes him as a result. The Stranger, then, is someone who lives by rules different from those of the community and thereby becomes a threat to it.

Meursault is also a stranger to the world itself, which offers no answer to the question of meaning. We can interpret this as existential alienation: a human being confronting a silent universe. How often do we share that experience when we try to understand what happens to us, only to find it beyond our ability to grasp or explain?

What Makes Someone an Outsider in the World?

Both Camus’s novel and Ozon’s film show us that alienation has many dimensions. It concerns our inner lives, our relationships with others, and our place in the world, all at once. We see emotional alienation when someone experiences and expresses feelings differently from what those around them expect. As a result, others fail to understand them or even exclude them.

We ourselves often treat people who differ from us as outsiders. Someone speaks a language different from mine, practices a different religion, or comes from a culture and tradition unlike my own—so they must be a stranger. How often does this attitude shape our judgments, choices, and decisions about others in practice? And are those judgments always accurate or fair?

Alienation also has social and institutional dimensions. Communities and their institutions judge people not only by their actions but also by whether they fit an accepted model of “normality.” We find it remarkably easy to label someone an outsider simply because we do not understand them—and have no desire even to get to know them so that we might.

A sense of alienation can also arise from experiencing the world as indifferent and lacking any obvious meaning. Much of our everyday behavior, our choices, and our decisions may amount to little more than responses to prevailing conventions.

Alienation has cultural and historical dimensions too. People who live alongside one another may fail to recognize each other’s humanity. Those denied a voice remain anonymous and nameless to the dominant group. The Arab man murdered in the film—who represents a different culture, religion, and tradition from Meursault’s—has no name.

Who Draws the Line Between “Us” and “Them”?

We can also understand outsider status as a relationship rather than an inherent trait. Whether someone counts as an outsider then depends on who tells the story and who has the power to draw the boundaries between what belongs to us and what belongs to others. Finally, remaining an outsider can be a conscious choice: a refusal to pretend or conform. In that case, exclusion becomes the consequence of staying true to oneself, as Meursault demonstrates.

Difference Does Not Have to Make Us Strangers

Although Ozon’s film is challenging and pessimistic in its outlook, it can prompt an important reflection: difference does not have to make us strangers. The Other need not be my enemy or represent danger. The attitude I adopt is up to me: Do I want to get to know and understand someone, or would I rather judge them straight away?

Asking what makes someone an outsider may reveal that, to know myself better, I must first make the effort to get to know the Other. Every encounter with the Other is, at its heart, also an encounter with myself—with what lies deepest within me, often still unknown. This is the demanding lesson in humanity that Camus and Ozon set before us. It seems indispensable today.

Read this article in Polish: Kogo uznajemy za obcego? Odpowiedź mówi więcej o nas